During an enjoyable anniversary yesterday, on which equipment broke down and Tim worked late but we still ate out and cooled off a while together, I mused about time travel.

It’s almost too bad that on 7/28/79 Tim and I couldn’t experience a quick jaunt 30 years into the future. I think I would’ve liked knowing some things. Maybe not, however, the things I might’ve thought I’d want to see.

My greatest fear, at age 19 walking up the aisle on Dad’s arm, was failure. Today I’m glad there were other forces urging me then to push forward despite my fear. Because fail we did. It’s good I couldn’t foresee how badly we were going to fail.

When you sign divorce papers four years after the wedding, recognizing your helplessness to erase the pain in your husband’s eyes, you shed a few illusions about yourself.

Instead of filing them, we burned the papers a few months later. Though commitment had gained a stronger foothold, we continued to fail one another. If I’d peered ahead from my wedding day and seen how much I could be hurt and could hurt another person, I would’ve wondered, why do this? What’s the point? Why even begin?

Part of the answer I’d give my younger self has been spoken by wiser people: Marriage is one of life’s classrooms. Not the only one or necessarily the best, it is a significant curriculum for those who choose it.

Seeing myself fall so drastically in the realm of interpersonal dealings was something I needed. I’d grown up pretty self-righteous. But much more than my failure, I needed to observe true mercy in action. Tim is no saint, and he didn’t expect to be the first one of us offering mercy, but that’s how things played out. In the years since, though always a couple of losers in some respects, he and I have both practiced the giving and receiving of grace.

I don’t know. Grief and sadness are hard. But even if our dance had ended earlier, I think I would be thankful for the lessons gained from each fumbling step we took while the music played.

And today, well, here are things I think I would have enjoyed seeing 30 years ago:

You trim tree branches on a Saturday morning, loading them into my parents’ old yellow wheel barrow and piling them neatly beside the shed you built, while I watch through the window, jogging on the treadmill you found and repaired for me, listening to old pop tunes you’re not super fond of but don’t berate when you enter our bedroom, as sweaty as I am, to change shirts and grin as I wave and sing in puffs that the night is long, but you are here.